FIDE and Chess.com are pleased to announce the Women’s Speed Chess Championship that will held from 18th June until 20th July 2020. The event has been set up consisting of 4 major stages of play:

1. Titled Swiss Tournaments
2. Playoff Qualifiers
3. Grand Prix
4. WSCC Super Final

The Titled Swiss Tournaments comprise of six Swiss tournaments open only to titled players (WCM/WFM/WIM/WGM/IM/GM) scheduled to be played from 18th to 23rrd June starting at 7 AM PDT/USA. These events will be played under three time controls i.e. 5 minutes + 1 second, 3 minutes + 1 second and 1 minute + 1 second. The Top 8 Players from each tournament group will then qualify for a Play-Off Qualifier

The Play-Off Qualifiers will compete in a 2-round Play-Off Qualifier held immediately after the Swiss tournament concludes. The time control used will remain and the top finishers will be selected to advance to the next stage.

The Grand Prix will be the next stage consisting of four legs with 21 participants made up of 12 players who qualified through the Swiss and Playoffs, plus another 9 seeded players who will be nominated by FIDE and Chess.com. The names of players who qualify for the finals will be made known on 16th June 2020. There will also be one wild card nominated by the FIDE President to be invited to take part in one of the Grand Prix legs.

Each Grand Prix leg will be participate by 16-players over 5 days of play from 24th to 28th June, 30th June to 4th July, 7th to 11th July, and 14th to 18th July, with the first game to start at 5:30 AM PDT/USA. For this round of play, the legs are divided into three 30 minutes segments of the same time control played in the Swiss and Play Off tournaments.

In each Grand Prix leg, every player scores Grand Priz cumulative points according to her position in the final standings with the top 2 players who score the most points to qualify for WSCC Super Final.  Each Grand Prix legs will award USD 3,000 to the eventual Champion with a total prize fund of USD 10,300 up for grabs.

For the WSCC Super Final, the top two Grand Prix best players will square off in the Women’s Speed Chess Championship Super Final match to be played on International Chess Day, 20th July starting at 7 AM PDT/USA. The game segment will increase to 90 minutes per segment but the time control will remain as is as per previous rounds. Similarly, the player who accumulates the most cumulative points wins the match.

The prize fund offered are USD 6,500 going to the Champion and USD 3,500 to the runner up

Those who are interested to learn more about the event, please click HERE for more information, or download the Regulations for the event via the link below. Malaysians who are interested to take part in the event, kindly contact the MCF Secretary – Najib Abdul Wahab, at +6016.338.2542 or write to mcfsecretaruat [at] malaysiachess [dot] org

Regulations for Women’s Speed Chess Championship 2020 (pdf)